NYC loves the lad from Liverpool

It's no secret that New York has a special place in its heart for John Lennon.  On December 8th, 1980 the music legend was shot and killed in front of his residence, The Dakota on West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side.

For the next five years afterwards, Lennon's widow, Japanese-born artist and musician Yoko Ono, worked with local landscape architects to designate a quiet zone across the street in Central Park, and the infamous Strawberry Fields site was dedicated on 9 October 1985.  But Lennon's memorial doesn't just belong to New Yorkers.  In fact, 121 countries around the world have declared Strawberry Fields in Central Park, with its "Imagine" plaque, to be an official Garden of Peace.

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Peace activism was certainly a very prominent part of Lennon's life with Yoko Ono.  Indeed its a very strong theme that British-Australian artist John Waters explores in his wonderful production of Lennon: Through A Glass Onion, showing at the Union Square Theater on East 17th Street (until 22 February 2015).

Now I grew up watching John Waters on Australian TV, and he seriously hasn't changed a bit.  I'd probably watch him read the phone book though, so I'm a biased reviewer.  It is therefore quite reassuring to me that the critics at the New York Times felt as positively as I did about this production.

Waters does not impersonate Lennon during this show, but he does tell his story in a first-person narrative.  And Waters has been performing Glass Onion since 1992, across Australia and in London's West End, so he's had plenty of time to polish it up.  While Waters belts out excerpts from some 34 tunes on guitar and maintains his strong vocals throughout, piano accompaniment and harmony is provided by the excellent Stewart D'Arrietta, whose theatre pedigree includes a recent stint as musical director for The White Album Concert at the Sydney Opera House.

The show plays without an intermission, but if you're a fan of the Beatles, or the magic combination of Lennon & McCartney, you'll love this play.  I came away thinking it's just the kind of retrospective production that I could imagine Lennon doing, had his life not been so dramatically cut short.  The tale Waters spins is frank, and at times rather humorous - but always very self-effacing.  The songs complement the plot and as such, their lyrics take on a poignancy you might not have previously attributed to them (such as in the case of "Julia"about Lennon's mother, and "Beautiful Boy", about Sean Lennon - the son that John wasn't sure he and Yoko would ever have).

The show revealed Lennon to be a talented, complex, thoughtful man who loved his wife and his family, and had great times making music.  But it's clear that John Lennon always knew there was more to life than being a rock star.  Indeed, the Lennon/McCartney song "Glass Onion" pokes fun at those people who were inclined to look too deeply for meaning in Beatles lyrics.  In Lennon's mind, there were much more serious issues to be concerned about in life.

Throughout the show, I remember thinking how much I wanted to buy John Waters and Stewart D'Arrietta a beer afterwards.  But I think what I really wanted to do was to pull up a barstool alongside John Lennon.  It will forever be a shame that on that cold December evening 14 years ago, we were all robbed of the chance to ever do that.